New archival materials have provided the basis for rethinking the dynamic of the Holocaust in Poland. These historical sources consist primarily of court papers from postwar trials of Polish citizens. Using such files, historians are now better able to document and write the dramatic story of antagonism between Jews evading the Nazi dragnet, and a hostile rural populace which sometimes collaborated in persecution. Although important works on the Holocaust appeared earlier in Poland, only during the last several years has a scholarly milieu emerged in the country for taking the Holocaust out of its intellectual ghetto as a strictly «Jewish» subject, and repositioning it at the center of Poland's wartime history.

Contents: Jan T. Gross: Introduction – Natalia Aleksiun: Christian Corpses for Christians! Dissecting the Anti-Semitism behind the Cadaver Affair of the Second Polish Republic – Krzysztof Persak: Jedwabne before the Court. Poland's Justice and the Jedwabne Massacre - Investigations and Court Proceedings, 1947-1974 – Barbara Engelking: Murdering and Denouncing Jews in the Polish Countryside, 1942-1945 – Alina Skibinska: Perpetrators' Self-Portrait. The Accused Village Administrators, Commune Heads, Fire Chiefs, Forest Rangers, and Gamekeepers – Jan Grabowski: «I have only fulfilled my duties as a soldier of the Home Army.» Miechów AK and the killings of Jews in Rędziny-Borek. A Case Study – Omer Bartov: Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies. Jewish-Christian Relations in Buczacz, 1939-1944 – Andrzej Żbikowski: «Night Guard»: Holocaust Mechanisms in the Polish Rural Areas, 1942-1945. Preliminary Introduction into Research – Agnieszka Haska: Discourse of Treason in Occupied Poland – Joanna Tokarska-Bakir: Cries of the Mob in the Pogroms in Rzeszów (June 1945), Cracow (August 1945), and Kielce (July 1946) as a Source for the State of Mind of the Participants – Benjamin Frommer: Postscript. The Holocaust in Occupied Poland, Then and Now.